My Publishing Journey: 3 Weeks Since Release

Time today for a whistle stop round up of progress so far, including some frustrations and exciting progress.

Sales

As expected, sales have slowed down, but I’ve breached the 100 mark, with around 103 novels sold, if you include the Kindle Unlimited page reads. That’s 19 (18%) paperbacks, 49 (47%) eBooks and 10,710 (35%) pages read on Kindle Unlimited.

Reviews

With six ratings on Goodreads (4.5 star average) and the same five reviews as last week on Amazon, things are a little slow there, although the ratings are still high. It’s more than a little frustrating because I know of people who have said they have read the book and left me a review on Amazon but neither has appeared (although it can take up to four days for a review to appear). One is a book blogger, which I can kind of understand why they are not showing, the other is an acquaintance and fellow author who read the book and gave me their feedback and said they had left a review. Very frustrating.

Research

I’ve just finished reading The Indie Author Mindset by Adam Croft. He’s one of the most successful indie authors in the world. It’s a short read but affirms my believe in the strategy I’m employing and with a few useful titbits of advice I hadn’t heard before. I recommend it to any Indie Author, either established or at the early stages like me. My key takeaways are:

Pay a lot more attention to my blurb and Amazon sales page

Don’t sweat the sales of my debut novel. I need to have few more books before I can develop a strong sales offering and advertising plan.

I’m still doing the Ads for Authors course, which is going well and I’ve applied for an advertising account through Amazon (not the KDP one) and it’s taking an age to get approval.

Audiobook

Audiobook production is going at a fast rate of knots. It’ll be pausing for Christmas and gives me chance to review each of the recorded chapters. Recording is 65% of the way through. I’ve listened to half of it and it’s very surprising how much I’m enjoying it. It’s like hearing it with fresh ears and I’m actually getting caught up in the story. The process has also spotted a handful of minor corrections I need to make in the text itself.

Interviews & Blog Posts

Interviews are slowing for Christmas, so I won’t be posting quite so often until the new year. It gives me time to work on the second novel which is the sequel to In The End. I still have a lot of concurrent interviews in the pipeline for the new year and I’m constantly bugging more people.

I’ve been trying to secure interviews with local independent booksellers, but I have encountered issues. The first is that there are pretty much no independent booksellers within ten miles of my house. There are loads in London, so I may have to reach out further. The single local store I did find wasn’t interested. I guess they don’t want any free publicity!

Book Cover Competition

My cover is still in the AllAuthor competition and if it looks likely, unless there is a big surge in votes, that I’ll get through to the next and final round. I’ll need 850 votes to even think about winning, but with a small surge in support I could be looking at top five. If you haven’t voted since last Friday then please, please, please click here and press the orange VOTE button.

Priorities

I have to remind myself to keep focusing on the priorities, which are:

Get book two ready for release

Get the audiobook ready for release

Get reviews on Amazon and Goodreads

Everything else is noise which may or may not push a small amount of sales. Once I have book two ready I can plan discounting and free giveaways to start advertising and building a fan base to then introduce book two.

That’s about it for me for now. The next update will be after Christmas, so for those of you who celebrate…Happy Christmas from me. I know a great last minute present for your loved ones…

Thanks for the update, Gareth. Sorry to hear that the local store was not interested in stocking your book. I know you’ll keep trying though, especially given that a lot of indie authors give up after receiving a few ‘nos’. I hope you’ll get some news from the local papers, too. It’ll be interesting to hear if they will offer you any free publicity.
Have a great Christmas.

Hi GJ, Now once the excitement wears off it’s getting readers to read, right? Hope you get that feedback. Great to do some self-refection on your project. Fans and readers can be a little fickle. There is a wax and wane as a writer. You have to write even when the comments and critiques trickle in or even dry up for a season. That is where I am now.

You can do it. My series, Chronolocity is a hexalogy so I am committed for a few years to get it done. I had to beta read to see if changing it to a YA audience might be the way to go. I made a promise to my wife to complete my Master’s program so we can retire on time. So, I am in that season if not doing book stuff. There is a season to get it moving. I will pray for great timing for us both in season and out of season.